From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20031108 Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 05:28:47 -0700 (MST) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Saturday, November 8, 2003 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH -------------------------------------------------------------------- M.Agueros M.Agueros, S.Anderson DIS 17:45 23:45 V.Woolf V.Woolf Echelle 23:55 05:10 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOT USED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B --------------------------------------------------------------------- UW06/R 18:02 00:00 0 0 0 0 0 6.0 0 0 0 UW08/R 00:00 05:32 0 0.4 0 0 0 5.1 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- 1st Half Observing Specialist: B.Ketzeback First half went smoothly. I kept a watchful eye to a stormcell building to the south along the ridgeline between El Paso and here. Nothing more visible here at the site other than some scattered fast moving clouds off and on towards the end of the first half however. The Lunar Eclipse at the start of the night was a wonderful addition to a good night. As an interesting side note, the moon as seen in the cloud camera image disappeared during the eclipse and reappeared as it concluded. The movie of this will be opening at a computer near you tomorrow. Visit the cloud camera archive page. 2nd Half Observing Specialist: R.McMillan Second half went well, but the weather was quite changeable. We started with clear skies and very poor seeing, then after a couple of hours the seeing improved to better than an arcsecond. The temperature rose more than 3 degrees C during the same period, so I had to make some focus adjustments on the fly to take advantage of the improved seeing. Soon after that, with the telescope still quite a bit cooler than the ambient air, the humidity started to rise, and we had several bands of clouds passing through -- first high clouds, then lower fast-moving clouds. Shortly before twilight I became nervous because of some low clouds that seemed threatening, along with a continuing rise in the dewpoint, so I cut observations off just a little early. We had a repeat of a bug that I saw for the first time only a few nights ago, where the observer pushed apple+click instead of shift+click, and his later shift+click offsets were messed up. I re-acquired the star for him by using shift+click myself, then had him close his slitviewer image window before trying again, and this worked fine. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEGDFVO) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM --------------------------------------------------------------------- 18:40 dis-slit -110(582) 117 68 5.4/7.8 187 1 - 0.98 18:46 NA2gdr -1737(42262) 120 69 5.3/7.5 160 1 R 1.02 20:53 dis-slit 150(794) 196 57 6.9/6.1 266 5 - 1.07 23:58 Echelle -25(-166) 146 64 4.7/5.7 135 11 ND2 2.8 -------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 49 19 1 259 (W) 92 clear none 17:01 45 21 4 259 (W) 107 clear none 18:01 41 25 5 255 (WSW) 231 clear none 19:01 43 16 0 183 (S) 122 clear none 20:01 43 18 1 189 (S) 167 clear none 21:01 45 15 4 259 (W) 66 prtly cldy none 22:01 45 14 5 189 (S) 53 prtly cldy none 23:01 44 14 8 184 (S) 77 clear none 00:01 41 18 6 150 (SSE) 118 clear none 01:01 43 16 12 175 (S) 143 clear none 02:01 45 17 11 175 (S) 90 clear none 03:01 45 34 17 177 (S) 197 prtly cldy none 04:01 46 36 19 179 (S) 205 prtly cldy none 05:01 46 37 11 182 (S) 221 prtly cldy none Note: the wind was coming from the azimuth listed. The convention used is north=0 degrees, east=90 degrees. The dust count is particles > 1u per 0.1 cubic feet. TELESCOPE STATUS Telescope drives operational. Current Remark version: 2.85b Current guide software version: guider v4.1b4 Current TCC version: 2.7.2 Current TUI version: TUI-0.75